Monday, December 17, 2012

Connecticut school shooting: America gets a taste of its own medicine - By Yamin Zakaria

Connecticut school shooting: America gets a taste of its own
medicine

Driven by hate, another homegrown terrorist goes on the rampage –
this would have been the headline if Adam Lanza had been called Mohammed Lanza.
Similar headlines were seen after the Oklahoma bombings; the media spared not
time in tarnishing the Muslims even before the basic facts were known. Like
Timothy McVeigh and Anders Breivik, Adam Lanza is also white with Christian
heritage. Will the media now scrutinise the link between the ethnicity and
religion of these men and the acts of gratuitous violence?

There is no apparent political motive; the targets were innocent
children who could not have caused any harm to Adam Lanza. The only possible
‘justification’ Adam Lanza could have argued is - these children posed a threat
to him in the future; hence, he took some sort of pre-emptive strike by killing
them. This is the same argument employed by the Zionists when they deliberately
target women and children in Palestine, and the US has done the same to some
extent after 9/11; shoot first then ask questions.

Of course, everyone sympathises with the parents of those innocent
children, however, non-Americans will point out the international dimension to
this issue. It reeks of hypocrisy for Obama to come on TV and shed tears, when
the US has been doing the same in foreign countries since the Spanish-American
wars at the turn of the 20th century. Only few weeks back, the US
President ignored the dead children in Gaza and continued to defend the Israelis
dropping bombs over civilian populated areas. The Pakistanis and the Afghanis
will point out the awful killer drones that have consumed so many innocent
children. Now America should understand how the parents in Pakistan,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen and occupied Palestine feel. One man’s collateral
damage is another man’s child!

The
list below highlights major atrocities like the Connecticut school shooting that
have captured national and international headlines; many more incidents do not.
For example, from 2002 to 2006, single cases of shootings have occurred each
year and in 2007, 7 cases of shootings were reported.

1984: James Oliver Huberty shoots dead 21 people at a McDonald's
in California

1999: Two students at Columbine high school kill 13 and injure
20, before killing themselves

2007: A student kills 32 and injures dozens more at Virginia Tech
university

2009: 13 people are killed in a mass shooting at Ford Hood
military base in Texas

2012: James Holmes kills 12 people and injures 58 at a cinema in
Aurora, Colorado

President
Obama correctly reflected on the empirical data and said: “As a country
we have been through this too many times”. Why
is America producing these violent angry young men? Instead of addressing this
pertinent point, he suggests the need for tighter gun control. For sure the reduction in the supply of
weapons will contribute to reducing gun related crimes, but not the crime
itself, because the perpetrator will find other ways to bring harm; it’s not the
gun that kills but the person pulling the trigger. The primary cause is the
motive.

Accordingly, American needs to ask what motivates such individuals
to commit massacres. What ideas and values have been injected in their minds?
There is no Al-Qaeda here, no radical Imams, there is no foreign influence.
Therefore, America needs to look in the mirror for answers which may pose a
degree of challenge for a society that has a culture of blaming outsiders.

Any impartial observer will point out that American history is
soaked in the blood of innocents, and its popular culture espouses violence. The
superficial paradigm of the good guys hunting the bad guys that is often seen in
the movies and has shaped the mindset of the nation was invented not to promote
right and wrong, but to glorify violence. America as a society profits from
violence and bloodshed, it continues to develop, stockpile and trade with lethal
weapons whilst lecturing about peace.

Internally, US public opinion and the media are dominated by
Zionist-Christian militancy where the interest of Israel is put before the US
itself, and then you have religious fanaticism and xenophobia emanating from the
right-wing Christians including the radical Republicans. All these factors have
contributed to creating a sadistic mindset that is often visible in the actions
of it soldiers, on and off the battle field.

Here is a bitter pill for the American establishment. Instead of
demonising Muslims and Islam, maybe they can learn something from them, as can
Muslims learn from the American success. Do you ever hear of a young man going
into a school in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Pakistan and commit such atrocities? Do
you ever hear of serial killers in the Islamic world? This is not an issue of
genetics, it is one of values. Islam teaches that ultimately we will be held
accountable for our deeds, and our freedom in terms of freewill should be
exercised within those parameters. And such values need to be enforced through
tough penal codes, where crimes are not rewarded but punished.Although Christianity professes the same
values, however it has been diluted and marginalised in society.

Instead of allowing the Zionists promote hate through the media,
and create a rift with the Islamic world to serve Israeli foreign policy, and
keep the ordinary Americans ignorant, confined to the trash culture of Jerry
Springer, Fox ‘News’, and stop bigots like O’Reilly and Pam Geller, it should
look to liberate itself and re-examine the values promoted through the media and
popular culture.